Francesco Rosi: Celebs Rumors

Eckhart Schmidt Producer and filmmaker Eckhart Schmidt has shot documentaries and five feature films in Sicily. Through his docs, he discovered that Bagheria-born Giuseppe Tornatore was highly influenced by the monsters of the Villa Palagonia, and that Francesco Rosi shot his movie “Salvatore Giuliano” on all original locations.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Giuliano Montaldo, the prolific Italian director, actor and film industry executive, whose works comprise powerful political drama “Sacco and Vanzetti” about the Massachusetts trial and execution in 1927 of accused Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.

For decades, Italian filmmakers dominated Cannes.If the 1960s saw Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti reign supreme, somehow the 1970s were even richer. Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi won shared top prizes in 1972, while for two consecutive years later that decade the Taviani brothers and then Ermanno Olmi hoisted Palmes across a border that sits just 40 miles away.This year’s lone competition title from an Italian director (the only other Italian language film, “The Eight Mountains,” comes courtesy of two Belgians), Mario Martone’s “Nostalgia” will probably not break that particular drought, but the Neapolitan director can take solace in another modest honor: Telling a story about mothers and sons, about gangsters and priests, and about a peculiar kind of longing for the past in a place where little has changed for hundreds of years, “Nostalgia” is a nigh perfect candidate to wave il Tricolore.Taking a thin amount of plot and stretching it as far and wide as it can go, the film itself is far from perfect, but it does benefit from “The Traitor” star Pierfrancesco Favino’s terrific lead performance as a man who learns the hard way that there’s no going home again.After forty years abroad, Felice (Favino, of course) returns to his native Naples a stranger in a familiar land.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian producer Massimo Cristaldi, who as a production manager worked with masters such as Federico Fellini and Francesco Rosi before setting up his own company and shepherding films including prizewinning drama “Sicilian Ghost Story,” has died. He was 66.Cristaldi’s death was announced over the weekend by his Rome-based company Cristaldi Pictures in a statement that did not specify the cause.Born in 1956, Massimo Cristaldi was the only son of prominent producer Franco Cristaldi, the triple Oscar-winner who made Pietro Germi’s “Divorce Italian Style,” Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord” and Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso.”In 1974 Massimo Cristaldi started cutting his teeth in the film business first as a production assistant and eventually, starting in the 1980s, becoming a line producer on many of his father’s productions, working with Fellini, Rosi, Tornatore, and many other Italian cinema greats.

Lise Pedersen The Cineteca di Bologna, which runs Il Cinema Ritrovato – the other major European event dedicated to heritage film alongside the Lumière Fest in Lyon – has announced a slate of upcoming releases to mark the centenaries of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Francesco Rosi.These include Pasolini’s ”Uccellacci et Uccellini” (”The Hawks and the Sparrows,” 1966) and “Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo” (“The Gospel According to St Matthew,” 1964) and Francesco Rosi’s ”C’era una Volta” (”More than a Miracle,” 1967). Other notable works aiming for a 2022 release in time for the Cannes, Bologna and Lumière festivals include Vittorio de Sica’s Oscar-winning Sciuscià (”Shoeshine,” 1946).

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s storied Titanus studio, producers of myriad golden era works from Cinema Italiano, has inked a global distribution deal with pubcaster RAI’s sales unit RAI Com for its entire library of roughly 400 titles.The landmark agreement, besides distribution, entails a collaboration to restore and preserve the Titanus library, which is a treasure trove comprising early works by Italo masters such as Federico Fellini and Francesco Rosi, and Luchino Visconti classics, alongside plenty of genre fare including cult horror helmers Dario Argento and Mario Bava.It’s a mix of classics and more rarely seen pics featuring a wide array of late and living Italo stars, comprising Alberto Sordi, Marcello

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian actor and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, who played the prying journalist Gianna Brezzi in the Dario Argento cult classic “Deep Red”(Profondo Rosso), and was herself a cult figure, has died. She was 70.The cause of her death, announced by her daughter Asia Argento and Italian news reports, was not disclosed.Born in Florence in June 1950, Nicolodi made her acting debut in Italian master Francesco Rosi’s “Many Wars Ago” (Uomini Contro).